Jackson: the Rise and Fall of the World's Largest Walled Prison

Jackson: the Rise and Fall of the World's Largest Walled Prison PDF Author: Perry M. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692261569
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
OVER THE YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN MUCH SPECULATION about how Jackson prison came to be so immense and why it perpetually cycled between disrepute and disorder on one hand and hopeful programs and productive industry on the other. Once built, the question as to whether it might just be too massive ever to be properly managed was raised repeatedly over its existence. Were its problems a curse of design or just a developing legacy? Who conceived it, planned it and brought it into being? What problems already present in the old prison had survived transplant to the new? Answers to these questions require the following of an often obscure and erratic paper trail. This book is subtitled "A History and a Memoir." An even more accurate description might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.

Jackson: the Rise and Fall of the World's Largest Walled Prison

Jackson: the Rise and Fall of the World's Largest Walled Prison PDF Author: Perry M. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692261569
Category : Prisons
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
OVER THE YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN MUCH SPECULATION about how Jackson prison came to be so immense and why it perpetually cycled between disrepute and disorder on one hand and hopeful programs and productive industry on the other. Once built, the question as to whether it might just be too massive ever to be properly managed was raised repeatedly over its existence. Were its problems a curse of design or just a developing legacy? Who conceived it, planned it and brought it into being? What problems already present in the old prison had survived transplant to the new? Answers to these questions require the following of an often obscure and erratic paper trail. This book is subtitled "A History and a Memoir." An even more accurate description might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.

Jackson Jailhouse

Jackson Jailhouse PDF Author: Graham Iwanowski
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Jackson's history is closely tied to prison history. The prison made Jackson a wealthy industrial town during the Industrial Revolution by providing valuable, cheap labor in the factories. Prison history is not just important to Jackson, it's important to Michigan and the United States. This book is an even more accurate description that might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.

Jacktown

Jacktown PDF Author: Judy Gail Krasnow
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1625857942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Competing with the likes of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Jackson won the battle to build Michigan's first state prison in 1838. During the era of the "Big House" and industrial growth, the penitentiary's on-site factories and cheap inmate labor helped Jackson become a thriving manufacturing city. In contrast to Jacktown's beautiful Greco-Roman exterior, medieval punishments, a strict code of silence, no heat, no electricity and a lack of plumbing defined life on the inside. Author Judy Gail Krasnow shares the incredible stories of life at Jacktown, replete with sadistic wardens, crafty escapees, Prohibition's Purple Gang, a chaplain who ran a brothel and influential reformers.

Challenging Confinement

Challenging Confinement PDF Author: Bonnie L. Ernst
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479825565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
"Challenging Confinement is an examination of how the feminist movements in the late twentieth century ignited prison protests, activism, and reform in women's prisons during the era of mass incarceration"--

Gallows Humor

Gallows Humor PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Comic books, strips, etc
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Book Description


Southern Michigan Prison

Southern Michigan Prison PDF Author: Alfredo Shipman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Jackson's history is closely tied to prison history. The prison made Jackson a wealthy industrial town during the Industrial Revolution by providing valuable, cheap labor in the factories. Prison history is not just important to Jackson, it's important to Michigan and the United States. This book is an even more accurate description that might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.

Jacktown: History & Hard Times at Michigan’s First State Prison

Jacktown: History & Hard Times at Michigan’s First State Prison PDF Author: Judy Gail Krasnow
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1467135232
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Competing with the likes of Detroit and Ann Arbor, Jackson won the battle to build Michigan's first state prison in 1838. During the era of the "Big House" and industrial growth, the penitentiary's on-site factories and cheap inmate labor helped Jackson become a thriving manufacturing city. In contrast to Jacktown's beautiful Greco-Roman exterior, medieval punishments, a strict code of silence, no heat, no electricity and a lack of plumbing defined life on the inside. Author Judy Gail Krasnow shares the incredible stories of life at Jacktown, replete with sadistic wardens, crafty escapees, Prohibition's Purple Gang, a chaplain who ran a brothel and influential reformers.

A Wall Is Just a Wall

A Wall Is Just a Wall PDF Author: Reiko Hillyer
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478025883
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Throughout the twentieth century, even the harshest prison systems in the United States were rather porous. Incarcerated people were regularly released from prison for Christmas holidays; the wives of incarcerated men could visit for seventy-two hours relatively unsupervised; and governors routinely commuted the sentences of people convicted of murder. By the 1990s, these practices had become rarer as politicians and the media—in contrast to corrections officials—described the public as potential victims who required constant protection against the threat of violence. In A Wall Is Just a Wall Reiko Hillyer focuses on gubernatorial clemency, furlough, and conjugal visits to examine the origins and decline of practices that allowed incarcerated people to transcend prison boundaries. Illuminating prisoners’ lived experiences as they suffered, critiqued, survived, and resisted changing penal practices, she shows that the current impermeability of the prison is a recent, uneven, and contested phenomenon. By tracking the “thickening” of prison walls, Hillyer historicizes changing ideas of risk, the growing bipartisan acceptance of permanent exile and fixing the convicted at the moment of their crime as a form of punishment, and prisoners’ efforts to resist.

Texas Tough

Texas Tough PDF Author: Robert Perkinson
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429952776
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 494

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Book Description
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.

Fascinating Prison Stories From Jackson's Past

Fascinating Prison Stories From Jackson's Past PDF Author: Mauricio Ruesink
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Jackson's history is closely tied to prison history. The prison made Jackson a wealthy industrial town during the Industrial Revolution by providing valuable, cheap labor in the factories. Prison history is not just important to Jackson, it's important to Michigan and the United States. This book is an even more accurate description that might have been "A History Illuminated by a Memoir." For almost three decades (nearly half of its existence), Perry Johnson was intimately involved in the operation of the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. Starting there as a lowly counselor in 1955, he would, before his career was over, serve the prison as the Deputy Warden, Administrative Assistant to the Warden and Warden - before moving on to oversee all of Michigan's prisons and eventually becoming Director of the entire Department of Corrections. It would be no exaggeration to say that he knew Jackson Prison inside and out. To the reader's benefit, the recounting of this career is not merely a recitation of events, but also an evaluation of their meaning and context. It is a tale told with humor and compassion. As is inevitable in any history of an old-line prison there are stories involving extreme violence and cruelty - but these are leavened with others that are genuinely funny.